An International City

Berlin is an international city. How could it not be? And nothing demonstrates it more than by living with Eileen and meeting her friends. Though, all of that also impedes my German language learning a bit, since they're all totally and thoroughly bilingual, bicultural, and extremely perceptive when people (like me) are not.

Eileen and her friends went to an international school where everything was bilingual. For instance, some years they were taught math in English and some in German, their history focus was both German and American, etc. And they all can switch between the two easily and unconsciously. With such a background (Eileen's father is American and her mother is German, she has two passports and can even vote in US elections, though can never be president because she was born here), Eileen is basically the perfect tour guide. She can do simultaneous translations (she swears she can't, but I've seen her do it before), but it's more than that. She "translates" the entire culture, points out the things that she knows I don't know (since she's American too), explains why things are funny, why things are there, and can be critical of both sides. When I admire all the new architecture in Berlin, she says: "Well, we had a lot of room to build after the Americans bombed everything." When I marvel at being assigned a seat in the movie theater, she says: "Yes, and we never get shot." (cf. the batman shooting) She can mimic a German accent in English a little too well, and tends to make plenty of great Nazi jokes. Well-rounded might be the proper term for her. In any case, going out to dinner with her friends is confirmation of how international a city Berlin is, and so are all the other activities I've been doing.

But first let me describe Monday night's dinner. We went to an Italian restaurant where the service is slow and there is apparently always a loud, crying baby (though I didn't hear it make a peep all night). Eileen told me not to make any indication that I speak or understand Italian, since she wanted me to inform her what they were saying behind their backs. The waiter was an adorable old Sicilian who took the orders in a fun mixture of German and Italian. Basically everyone ordered in German and he would respond in basic Italian that everyone could understand, and ask for clarifications in German (complete with Italian accent). After a while, it became clear that he wasn't saying anything rude about them, and so Eileen had another task for me: to speak to the guy in Italian so we would get served faster. Well, that didn't quite work, but he did give us free dessert wines at the end of the meal and begged me to come back as we were leaving. It's true, Italians prefer when you speak to them in their language. Then again, I think everyone does. In any case, I don't think I'll go back there—I make better pasta than they do! Look out for a blog post about me making pasta, FYI!

Did I mention there are a lot of Italians here? The economy isn't too good in Italy right now (it is one of the PIGS countries—Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain), so a lot of Italians have been leaving to find work elsewhere, and Berlin is apparently a popular destination. My friend Nunzio is from a little town called Matera which looks like the most beautiful place on earth from the pictures he showed me (it's near Bari). I've been spending quite a bit of time with Nunzio, who is one of these Italians who moved to Berlin to work, and he has other Italian friends. On the one hand, I'm not forgetting my Italian! On the other, I guess I'm not speaking German as often as possible.

But it's okay, because I met Nunzio at a language exchange filled with American expats, students from every country imaginable, honest to goodness Berliners, and more. I love these sorts of gatherings, because you not only get to practice whatever language you want (I tend to speak more German there than anything else, but I'm more on track at those places), but you also get to meet people who are equally passionate about learning languages as I am. In America, I suppose speaking four languages makes me kind of special. In Europe, I'm average. There is one guy I met named Roberto who just puts me to shame.

Roberto is a student at the ENS (where I will be come September) and I believe I mentioned him in a previous blog post. He speaks at least 10 languages, easy—I mean, he was raised bilingual, which gives him an unfair advantage! But, he told me a story about someone who puts him to shame! At a yearly language gathering he attended, you get a name tag and write the languages you can converse in on it. This person Roberto met just wrote: "Try me." A bit pompous, but still very impressive. And the best part about Roberto (and other people you meet at these things) is that there is a very good chance they have heard of the OuLiPo and think they're amazing! When I introduce my research, I mostly start with saying "math in literature" and so far in Berlin, four out of five times, the response has been: "Do you study the OuLiPo?" It's really great.

So, Berlin may not be pretty, and the German language might be a bit rough around the edges, but at least it is an international city in the best sense of the word, and it is a delight to be here!